Could anybody verify my listening test? I can hear horrible artifacts with Lame 3.98b3 and Lame 3.97 --preset cbr 128. At 192kbps its ok. What is this around the guitar-echo? Lame 3.96 sounds better with --preset cbr 128.

Confirmed nasty warbling on 128~160 cbr/abr. At 128~160, it is not uncommon for different LAME versions to do different things. High quality settings (V2 +) are more secure with all the versions. Differences are only on killer samples. At lower bitrates there is a phenom of artifacts appearing on one version but not the other / on new vbr and not old vbr and vice versa. I also believe you can get reasonable security with cbr/abr no matter what the encoder version is - but only at high bitrates (192 +).

I personally prefer -V 2 --vbr-new. I just don't know what make this sample so hard to encode proberly. Only Lame 3.98b3 and 3.97 sound crummy on this with --preset cbr 128, far worse than 3.88 with -b 128 -h !?

I personally prefer -V 2 --vbr-new. I just don't know what make this sample so hard to encode proberly. Only Lame 3.98b3 and 3.97 sound crummy on this with --preset cbr 128, far worse than 3.88 with -b 128 -h !?

can anybody please explain me what -b## (and maybe also -mj) switches are \ howdo they work work :°° ?

I personally prefer -V 2 --vbr-new. I just don't know what make this sample so hard to encode proberly. Only Lame 3.98b3 and 3.97 sound crummy on this with --preset cbr 128, far worse than 3.88 with -b 128 -h !?

can anybody please explain me what -b## (and maybe also -mj) switches are \ howdo they work work :°° ?